I've tested the PCSX2 Alpha and OMG (+KOF02UM 224p images)

[Anderson]

I’ve decided to test the PCSX2 core v0.1 Alpha… and MY GOD, the core is already running smooth, can’t wait to see it over the years. I didn’t know the PS2 internal res was 640x448, which is perfect for fighting games, integer scale combined with a scanline shader at 224p, has the power “fix” many fighting games and beyond, hopefully in the future we will be able to turn off bilinear, deinterlace and activate progressive scan mode in the games with support. By acessing a raw, non post-processed video feed, it’s going to be finally possible to play games like HSF2 and SFZ Fighters Generation with a arcade perfect visual. Also, crt-geom with luminance at max is going to be perfect to deinterlace any 480i game like Tekken Tag and Ridge Racer V.

This is the final frontier to me (PS3 is going to take a while). Thanks to all involved and I hope development continues steady and consistent.

Below a few images of KOF02UM running perfectly in 224p

[Arviel]

That looks great! I didn’t now there was a PCSX2 core in the works. Have you also tried Play!? I wonder how they compare.

[Anderson]

I never tried the play! core, only a few youtube videos, I assumed it was a initial core and the emulator itself seems to need many improvements. I am using a notebook from 2012 and won’t be able to fully utilize the PCSX2 core for now, but at least the core 2D fighting games and Tekken 4 are running fine with shaders. I have plans to eventually build a small PC good enough to run RA at 1080p with shaders and also watch my movies.

[3miliooo]

I’d love to get either PS2 core just functioning on ANY level but at the moment, it just sucks to be me on this one!

PlayStation 2 cores: PCSX2, Play!

I’ve still not managed to get anywhere with this Tried cycling through the video drivers too… Can I ask what spec you have on the Win10 machine you got it running on?

Don’t suppose you had to do anything special with your 2012 laptop to get it running? I bought mine this year and no dice, so reading your posts makes me wonder whether it could possibly be my spec…

Any pointers appreciated.

[Anderson]

After I’ve added the bios, it booted normally. I am using glcore as a video driver and Windows 10. I will copy my specs below:

MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012) 2.6 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1 GB

Can you run the regular PCSX2 ?

[3miliooo]

Nope. I don’t have the BIOS for PCSX2 at the mo anyway but would at least expect RA to load either core before even going near game content; it just refuses; doesn’t crash, just backs straight out to menu.

Devs and Mods currently being v.helpful on that last link I posted, so we’ll see.

Your 2012 MacBook -whilst several years older- still seems substantially better specced than the rig I’m playing with, with it’s AMD Ryzen 3 3250U +Radeon and only 4gb of RAM, so this may have something to do with it!

[Anderson]

I hope you figure out what’s going on. Considering the importance of PS2, and looking at the work that it’s being done in flycast, I hope the next 1-2 years the PS2 core become something beautiful, like all other libretro cores.

[Bond007UK]

I tried this it out yesterday, but I was unimpressed with the look. Do I need to use specific shaders per game to make them look best? What shaders do you recommend? Those King of the Fighters screenshots look stunning!

Problem with heavy scan lines for me is that after too much play I can still see them for a while after I stop playing lol

[Anderson]

I’ve been testing the core over the past few days and one thing that is essential is being able to manipulate both bilinear options and deinterlace options in order to combine these options with the right shaders. Right now, this is possible if you edit the ini GSdx.ini inside the ini folder. I will paste below the values to change both filter and deinterlace

filter 0 nearest 1 bilinear (forced) 2 bilinear (ps2) 3 bilinear (excluding sprite)

interlace 0 none 1 weave tff 2 weave bff 3 bob tff 4 bob bff 5 blend tff 6 blend bff 7 Automatic

I am mostly using crt hyllian or crt geom, both slightly modified to match my preferences and also capable to force low res like 224 on the PS2.

If you change your interlace option to 2, which is weave bff and combine with the crt geom shader (change the shader luminance value to the max too), you’ll have a BEAUTIFUL and crisp image in certain games, like for Tekkens, and actually most of the PS2 games, if you want to play 2D Fighting games that originally were 224p, you can change both filter and deinterlace to 0, this way the video is ready to be changed by the shader.

I’ve only used KOF02UM to as an example above because it wasn’t a game originally in 224p, but by the nature of PS2 internal res (448p) it is exactly 2x the res of old arcade games which is curious to me and also a good thing, it means arcade ports are easily adjustable to original res.

I hope they add both bilinear and interlace options in the near future so we can save cfgs per game and have them perfectly tuned.

[Anderson]

I will paste a few images below, first HSF2 with and without bilinear (modifed editing the ini) and a few KOF98UM without bilinear too (you can disable the filter in game).